04 April 2009

April 2009

Washington - The flashing lights and booming sounds that wereattributed to a piece of orbiting space junk were not the result of aman-made object, according to the United States Air Force.

In an e-mail sent to WTOP, Stefan Bocchino of the USAF JointSpace Operations Center says the "bright light" seen over parts of theEast Coast Sunday night was not a result of a man-made space object.

The Joint Space Operations Center tracks more than 19,000 man-made objects in space, but no natural phenomena.

It was first believed that the lights and sounds were caused byspace junk related to the Russian rocket Soyuz docking with theInternational Space Stations Saturday.

Geoff Chester, spokesman for the U.S. NavalObservatory, was nearly sure the object was the rocket's booster tanksfor numbers of reasons. Whatever flashed through the sky followed theexact path the space junk was traveling over the eastern seaboard.

Witnesses describe the flashes in the sky as being coloredwith yellows and oranges. While fireballs usually throw sparks thatappear green followed by trains of blue and red. The loud explosionaccompanying the balls of fire in the sky also could be explained ifthe object was a rocket tank with residual amounts of booster fuel.

The flashes and booms that people heard prompted calls to 911 and the National Weather Service late Sunday night.

According to WVEC.com, the calls were numerous enough for theNational Weather Service to release this statement late Sunday night:

"Numerous reports have been called in to this office and intolocal law enforcement concerning what appeared to be flashes of lightin the sky over the Suffolk/Virginia Beach area. We are confident insaying that this was not lightning...and have been in contact withmilitary and other government agencies to determine the cause. Sofar...we have not seen or heard of any damage from this and willcontinue to inquire as to the cause."

Keen observers of weather might have noticed something odd about theflash of light and the subsequent loud rumble at around 10 o'clock onSunday night - something that might have tipped them off that it wasn'tjust thunder and lightning.

A spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory said the officialbelief now is that the brilliant flash, dimmed substantially on theEast End by the thick cloud cover, and the very loud and sustainedrumble that followed half a minute or more later were actually causedby a large meteor, called a bolide, or fireball, streaking through theearth's atmosphere and bursting apart.

"We were sitting watching television ... and from where I wassitting I could see a bit of light," said Al Marino, who lives with hiswife, Eve, in the Northwest Woods section of East Hampton. "Then therewas a rumbling, not a boom at first, and then -

boom!

Like you wouldn't believe. And it went on and on. The house shook like I've never experienced."

The Marinos weren't the only ones to have noticed that the event wassomething more than just thunder and lightning, even on a rainy nightthat featured a smattering of both.

"That was like no lightning I've ever seen," said MichaelAgnese, who lives in Hampton Bays. Mr. Agnese was sitting in a car atPonquogue Beach when the flash lit up the clouds. "It was more, like,all over, not just one spot. And the thunder was so loud I couldn'tbelieve it."

In Sag Harbor, Dan and Teresa Loos noticed the flash and boom,too. Ms. Loos thought it seemed odd but said her husband wrote it offto the line of thunderstorms passing to the north at the time.

"The way the light was just didn't really seem likelightning," Ms. Loos said. "And there was no noise," she added, forsome 30 seconds after the flash.

According to Geoff Chester, of the Naval Observatory, bolidestypically enter the atmosphere between 80 and 100 miles above theearth, accounting for the long pause between the flash of light and thesubsequent sound associated with it. The sustained sound would likelyhave been caused by the object, typically about the size of a largesuitcase or file cabinet, Mr. Chester said, breaking into pieces, witheach individual piece emitting a sonic boom as it was slowed by theearth's atmosphere. Most "shooting stars" seen from the ground are theresult of particles smaller than a pea entering the atmosphere.

Mr. Chester said that at first his office had believed theevent was caused by a piece of a Russian rocket, which took a crew tothe International Space Station last Thursday, crashing back to earth.But he said that space engineers now say the piece of therocket didn't re-enter the atmosphere until more than an hour laterthan the event witnessed on the East Coast and was over the easternPacific Ocean.

Along the Atlantic coast of Virginia and North Carolina, where theweather was clear, the event was witnessed by hundreds of people as abrilliantly bright shooting star arcing across the sky, fragmentinginto several pieces as it went.

Mr. Chester said that bolides are fairly common, with as manyas a dozen entering earth's atmosphere a day, but are witnessed bypeople on only rare occasions. The most famous and widely witnessedbolide event also took place in the Northeast: a 1992 meteor thatstreaked across the sky from Kentucky to New York, one remnant landingon and destroying a parked car in Peekskill. But even objects bigenough to be classified as a bolide often disintegrate before theyreach earth.

If there was any fragment that reached the planet surface onSunday, it likely landed in the ocean off North Carolina, Mr. Chestersaid.

Thousands of people saw the Big Boom, the Big Bang, thenot-a-Russian-rocket-but-a-meteor as it blazed across the mid-Atlanticsky on Sunday night.

But only one person has said he saw where it landed.

Joe Butler of Suffolk says he was driving south across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel when night turned briefly into day.

"The sky was light all of a sudden, like it was daytime," Butlerrecalled on Friday. "There it was, coming right at my car. It was sofast that I didn't even have time to think that I might have been indanger.

"It shot right over my car, it went down in the water right between the two bridges."

Butler said he was near the tallest part of the bridge, nearFisherman Island, where the northbound and southbound lanes separatewidely. The meteor, he said, splashed into the water between them.

"I was like, what in the world is going on?" Butler said. "Mydaughter, she said, 'Wow, what was that, Daddy?' and I said, 'I don'tknow, babe, I think that was a falling star.' "

The last week has been a strange one for South Korea. Beginning on thelast day of March a series of deafening sonic booms have been heardover the entire nation prompting many to believe they were under alienattack. Now it appears that the deafening roars that set of car alarmsand had panicky pedestrians running for cover in sheer terror wereprobably related to the North Korean satellite launch and the variousair forces monitoring the area.

None of that stopped virtually every newspaper in the countryreporting that Korea might be under UFO attack. Adding to thestrangeness of the week unusual lights or UFOs were seen over a numberof cities in the country. Internet sites crashed as people debated asto whether South Korea was facing annihilation at the hands of ET's ordevastation as a result of North Korean missiles.

Underground nuclear tests were proposed by a fewcommentators as the cause of the sound while others even suggested thattime travellers from the future may have arrived to save theirancestors from destruction. Some talked of ancient prophecies coming topass.

As a doomsday mentality gripped the nation many feltintrinsically that the world as they knew it was on the threshold of amajor change. Many local UFO research groups continue to suspect an ETinvolvement in the weeks events.

Comment: We here at SotT would like to propose that these sonic booms and lights in the sky could also have been meteorites.

There have been quite a few meteorites spotted world-wide inthe last year with a high percentage of these in the last few months.

Also, there have been several "sonic booms" heard, especiallyin the United States, lately that have been attributed to meteorites;and some "sonic booms" that are "unexplained" - which doesn't mean thatthey were not from meteorites, it just means that nobody wanted to "gothere."

It would seem likely, then, that the "sonic booms" heard inSouth Korea could also have been caused by meteorites entering theatmosphere.

To read about the numerous reports on sonic booms heard aroundthe world, just put "sonic boom" (with quotation marks) in the searchengine at the top right of the page and it will bring up quite a numberof them. Also, you may want to search the word "explosion" (without thequotation marks) to bring up a few more.

With the world's people in a shocked and chaotic mentally,brought about purposefully by the psychopaths who are running it, howeasy it will be to get them to believe that an incoming comet/meteor isa missile shot by whomever the psychopaths want the people to believeshot it.

Planetary scientists are all set to turn noise from the data obtainedby NASA/ESA LISA satellites' mission into useful information about themass of near-Earth asteroids.

LISA is on a mission to detect gravitational waves - a warpingof the space/time continuum that scientists hope to see directly forthe first time.

Slated for launch no earlier than 2018, LISA will includethree satellites connected by laser beams. The distance between thesatellites should change as a gravitational wave passes.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predicts thatgravitational waves from exploding stars or colliding black holesripple across the universe, causing other bodies to wobble likedriftwood in a motorboat's wake.

In 2006, planetary scientists realized that Near EarthAsteroids (NEAs) also would make the spacecraft wobble as they passednearby, creating a distinct signature in the data being collected.

Pasquale Tricarico, a scientist at the Tucson-based PlanetaryScience Institute, expanded on that work to predict the number ofasteroid encounters LISA can expect and how those encounters can beused to determine the mass of passing asteroids.

According to Tricarico, LISA can expect to see one or twoknown near-Earth asteroids a year, and a total of around ten during theexpected mission lifetime.

When an encounter with a known asteroid shows up in the data, scientists will already know its trajectory.

"So from the signal, we can indirectly measure the asteroid'smass because that's the only uncertainty in the equation," Tricaricosaid.

"These mass measurements are important because we only knowthe mass of asteroids that have been visited by spacecraft or the massof a few binary asteroids observed from Earth," he added.

"We always wonder about the porosity, the density, and this will give us measurements from additional asteroids," he explained.

If a known asteroid passes one of the satellites and doesn'tleave a signature, "that allows us to put an upper limit on the mass ofthat asteroid," Tricarico added.

Tricarico also has predicted the number of potential encounters with smaller, unknown NEAs.

If LISA starts detecting five asteroids a year instead of twoor three, this could modify theories concerning the distribution ofsizes in the NEA population.

Security cameras in Northern Ireland may shed some light on the cause of a massive fireball in the sky on Sunday.

The shooting star was reported at about 1230 BST by people living as far apart as Donegal and Cork.

David Moore chairman of Astronomy Ireland said they werefairly certain it was a rock from space which could have landedsomewhere in Ireland.

He said they were very keen to hear from anyone who has footage of what is suspected to be a meteor falling.

"We're fairly certain that it was a rock from space, a meteor which may have dropped a meteorite," he said.

"We are asking people to send in their reports, so we can triangulate on the path and figure out did it land on Ireland?"

The last time a meteorite was seen over Ireland was in 1999 over Carlowand there was a similar event over the skies of Northern Ireland 30years earlier.

Mr Moore said that no pictures had yet come to light of the incident, as it only lasted a few seconds.

But, he said, security cameras often captured such explosions in the sky.

"What can happen is security cameras that are filming in carparks or outdoors can catch these shooting stars, these fireballs,accidentally. So if anybody has any footage of that, we would bedelighted to see it.

"We think...it came from the west across the centre ofIreland, which means everybody would have seen it. We have reports fromCork and even from up as far as Donegal."

He said security cameras in Northern Ireland facing towards the south probably would have picked it up.

Anyone who saw it is asked to contact the Astronomy Ireland website on www.astronomy.ie.

"We will publish a report there in a few days," said Mr Moore.

"We will also predict where any meteorite might have fallen, aswe did with Carlow in 1999. A lady found the meteorite in a smallcountry lane.

"They will look like melted rocks, probably not very large. Weare looking for objects that would fit, in that particular case, in amug. But they could be larger."

Full Description of Event/Sighting: I amone of the sceptics who was inquisitive enough to Google next day tosee if there was any reportings. Amazingly, almost identical reportfrom Cleland which had been sited earlier in month, only this time wesaw it from north of the village. Orange, round, firey then burning outto ash colour with smoke trail and again travelling quickly towardsChapelhall, as previous witness reported.

By the end of the sighting, approx 3/4 mins we wentfrom inside house to garden, expecting to hear a bang or whatever?Again I am/was a non believer.

Swift'sprimary job is to quickly alert astronomers about new gamma-ray bursts- powerful explosions from distant dying stars. "But Swift's rapidresponse and flexibility allow us to perform other science while thespacecraft is waiting for gamma-ray bursts to occur," said presenterGeronimo Villanueva, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard SpaceFlight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

From its orbital perch, Swift can view targets using ultravioletwavelengths, visible light, and X rays -- and it's the only observatorythat sees them at the same time. Between bursts, astronomers task Swiftto survey the entire sky at X-ray wavelengths, monitor exploding stars,image galaxies, and study comets.

Comets are clumps of frozen gases mixed with dust sometimes called"dirty snowballs." These icy bodies cast off gas and dust whenever theyventure near the sun. Most recently, Swift observed Comet Lulin as partof a study led by Jenny Carter at the University of Leicester, U.K.Lulin was faintly visible to the naked eye when it passed 38 millionmiles from Earth --- or about 160 times farther than the moon - in lateFebruary.

Other comets captured by Swift include73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (SW3) -- a fragmenting comet that passedEarth in 2006 -- and 8P/Tuttle, which rounded the sun in January 2008."One of my projects is to work out the composition of Tuttle bystudying the gases that surround it," Villanueva said. Swift'sUltraviolet/Optical Telescope includes a device called a grism that canseparate wavelengths in ultraviolet light in much the same way as aprism spreads sunlight into colors. "Swift's grism covers a 'sweetspot' where many key comet gases strongly emit."

Swift also detects X rays from comets. The X rays arise through aprocess called charge exchange, as fast-moving ions emitted by the sunsnatch electrons from neutral comet gases. Because this interactionoccurs over such a large region, cometary X-ray emission can reachpowers as high as a billion watts.

Comets provide excellent laboratories to explore this process, whichmay play an important role in young planetary systems and other placeswhere hot and cold gases collide. Cometary X rays also serve as a wayto probe conditions in solar ions streaming through the solar system(the solar wind).

Comet Lulin provides the best example of cometary X rays Swifthas seen so far. "Lulin produced a lot of gas and very little dust,which reflects sunlight and makes comets much brighter," said teammember Stefan Immler, also at Goddard. This low dust content made Lulinfaint enough that Swift could simultaneously image the comet inultraviolet and X rays.

"The problem with many comets is that we often cannot use all ofSwift's instruments because they are simply too bright," Villanuevaexplained. Comet 17P/Holmes, which underwent a surprising outburst inOctober 2007, shed a lot of dust. "But we never detected X rays fromHolmes, and it was too bright to study its ultraviolet spectrum."

Neither SW3 nor Tuttle could be imaged in X rays with Swift, althoughNASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory detected both comets. They eachproduced much less water than Comet Lulin, which was gushing out nearly800 gallons of water a second when Swift observed it.

Plevna, Montana - 4/6/2009- A fireball was observed streaking at a steep angle towards the earth,approximately two miles south of Plevna. The object appeared to be abrilliant fireball, with a streak of fire trailing behind it. Theobject was observed for one-to-two minutes, dimmed in intensity,growing brighter, then dim again before disappearing over the horizon.What is unusual about this sighting is what happened next. The object suddenly reappeared, and shot back up into the sky, following the same path as when it had descended. Witnesses reported that the object was traveling at a high rate of speed in both directions.

Englewood, Colorado - 4/6/2009- Witness was driving during the late afternoon when he noticed anapproaching disc-shaped object in the sky. The object appeared toalternate in shape, and seemed to be drifting with, or coasting on, thewind. The witness further described the object as having a metallicouter shell, gun-gray in color, but not shiny. The object furtherseemed to change color as it rose and fell while continuing asouth-southwest path until finally disappearing from sight.

A "unique" micrometeorite found in Antarctica is challenging ideas about how planets can form.

Detailed analysis has shown that the sample, known as MM40, has achemical composition unlike any other fragment of fallen space rock.

This, say experts, raises questions about where it originated in the Solar System and how it was created.

It also means that astrochemists must expand their list of the combinations of materials in planetary crusts.

The detailed analysis of MM04 was led by Matthieu Gounelle from theLaboratory of Mineralogy and Cosmochemistry at the French NaturalHistory Museum.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS), the analysis revealed the "unique" chemical composition of MM04despite it being only 150 microns across as its widest point - abouthalf the width of a written full stop.

Dr Caroline Smith, curator of meteorites at the NaturalHistory Museum, London, UK, said the sample was important because ofthe role that the study of meteorites played in our understanding ofSolar System and planetary formation.

MM04 was a basaltic achondritic micrometeorite, said Dr Smith.

Achondritic meteorites were formed when the Solar System'splanets were coming into being. The substances in such meteorites andthe processes they have undergone can give clues about how the largerbodies were formed.

By contrast, chondritic meteorites were formed during the theSolar System's early days before material had accreted into planets.They have not been altered by the melting and re-crystalisation thathas utterly transformed the nature of, say, Earth rocks.

Dr Mahesh Anand, an astrochemist from the department of Earth& Environmental Sciences at the Open University, said: "It isfascinating as to how much information can be retrieved about theprocesses involved in planetary formation from tiny fragments ofextra-terrestrial material that routinely arrive on Earth anonymously."

For Dr Smith, the excitement of MM04 lay in the mystery of its origins.

"We have basaltic meteorites that are thought to come from anasteroid called 4 Vesta and we also have basaltic meteorites from theMoon and Mars," said Dr Smith.

"But [MM04's] chemistry does not match any of those places," she said. "It has to be from somewhere else."

While its ultimate origins are a mystery it does haveimplications for the ways that astrochemists thought planets could beformed. The analysis of MM04 showed that the "inventory" of suchprocesses must be expanded, said Dr Smith.

"Micrometeorites are often seen as the 'poor man's spaceprobe'," said Dr Smith "They land on Earth fortuitously and we do nothave to spend millions of dollars or euros on a robotic mission to getthem."

Jacksonville, Florida - A number of First Coast News viewers say they saw something spectacular in the sky Tuesday night.

"An asteroid just went blazing through our backyard in Neptune Beach,"wrote Ralph. "It was low and had a long fire tail. [It] looked like itwas going to hit a house."

Julia in St. Augustine saw something similar over State Road 206.

"It looked like a fire ball, which was flying through the sky,then suddenly, it exploded into smaller rocks," wrote Julia. "Thesmaller fragments may have landed somewhere west of Crescent Beach.Once in a lifetime sight!"

People in Middleburg saw it as well.

It wasvery large and very low," said Christean Ramage. "It was trailing firebehind it and was white hot in the front. After watching it for about 5seconds, it evaporated and disappeared before my eyes. I have neverheard or seen of one so low and large, so at first I thought it was abomb or missile (especially after all of this North Korean news)."

Cindy Hawkins just pulled into the driveway of her Middleburg home with her children.

"I looked up and saw the light blueish green darting across thesky," she said. "I told my kids it was a shooting star, ( I had neverseen one before), and we better make a wish; so much for my wish forworld peace."

An amateur stargazer has discovered a new comet, becoming the first South Korean to do so, science authorities said Wednesday.

Yi Dae-am, who heads the Yongwol Insectarium in Gangwon Province, foundthe comet, named as Yi-SWAN C/2009 F6, using a 90 millimeter telescopeand a digital camera on March 26.

Yi discovered the comet almost simultaneously with Americanastronomer Robert Mason, who found the comet in pictures taken from theSWAN (Solar Wind ANisotropies) solar observation instrument on theSolar Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft from March 29 to April 4.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) gave credit to both men in naming the comet Yi-SWAN.

Aside of running the insect museum, Yi is an also a part-timeastronomer who has a personal observatory in the slopes of Mt. Taehwa,Gangwon Province.

''Yi found the comet in two pictures he took from his SLRdigital camera and telescope around 5 a.m., locating a bright, bluegreen celestial object. The finding was immediately reported to theIAU, which confirmed they were images of a previously unidentifiedcomet,'' said an official from the Korea Astronomy and Space ScienceInstitute.

''Yi, becoming the first Korean to discover a comet,represents the growth in the country's astronomer population, amateuror professional, and will hopefully contribute in increasing publicinterest.''

Yi-SWAN is one of more brightest comets found at present, with a magnitude of 8.5 allowing it to be seen by small telescopes. The comet is currently in the constellation Cassiopeia, but is expected to move to Perseus by the middle of this month.

The comet is expected to move within 1.27 astronomical units ofthe sun around May 8, the closest it will ever get, and its brightnessis not expected to change from its current 8.5 magnitude, scientistssaid.

At 6:45 a.m., employees of the Public Buildings Authority (Autoridad deEdificios Públicos--A.E.P.) witnessed a luminous object crossing thehorizon from West to East along the southern shore between Lajas andGuánica. According to the workers, the brilliant object resembled"acetylene light". Upon reaching a certain distance, the objectshattered in two and fell into the sea. We cannot dismiss thepossibility of an aerolith that broke up after reaching a certainaltitude, being subjected to drastic temperature changes that resultedin a mid-air explosion.

I will continue looking into this matter with otherpotential witnesses to the case. Meanwhile, I have already contactedthe Puerto Rican Police's Joint Rapid Response Force (Fuerza Unida deRapida Reaccion - F.U.R.A) to see if they have any details on the case.More information to come.

Source: Argus-PR

Comment: For those who are unfamiliar with the term "aerolith", it is a meteorite consisting mainly of stony matter.

Description: Bronson and Chad. We werewalking over Chevron Island, which is located in Goldcoast Q.L.D.Australia. We suddenly saw a fireball oval shape moving smoothly andrapidly but slow enough to have a very good look at. One travellednorth until out of sight, straight after another followed anddisappeared above us. It was the most amazing thing we have ever seenand it has changed our lives forever. For everybody else who saw thisincident please email bro182@hotmail.com

On Feb. 28, sky-watchers at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australiasighted an unexpected guest: an asteroid heading directly toward theEarth. From the uncharted reaches of space, the asteroid zoomed towardthe planet at 12 miles per second, forcing physicists to scramble fortheir calculators and crunch the numbers. Within minutes, theastronomers calculated the asteroid's size, mass, speed and vector.

At approximately 69 ft. to 154 ft. in diameter, Asteroid 2009DD45 posed a serious threat to the planet, and despite globalsurveillance, no one saw it coming. A similar asteroid destroyed 800square miles of Siberian forest in the early twentieth century.

In response to similar near-Earth encounters, Congress iscurrently investigating the possibility of a new mandate that wouldrequire astronomers to identify and analyze all 140 meter near-Earthobjects by 2020. The most recent Congressional mandate requiredastronomers to identify all 1000 meter near-Earth objects by 2012.

"In the future, we're going to have hundreds of thousands tolook at, but only thousands will be threatening," explained Prof.Joseph Burns, planetary sciences.

According to Burns, in past years, similar asteroidsrepeatedly passed near the planet, but due to the development of modernsurveying technology, scientists and politicians express increasingdesire to identify possible threats.

"We have an incomplete sample of everything outthere," he said. "What we're doing now is building a couple of largetelescope systems."

For instance, in conjunction with the Cassini Imaging ScienceSubsystem at NASA, Burns studies the characteristics of Saturn's rings.Since 2004, the unmanned spacecraft Cassini has orbited the giantplanet, taking detailed images of the rings and the stars. In thattime, the images revealed the movement of the ring as Saturn rotates onits axis.

Last week, the position of Cassini, the sun, and the ringcreated a surprising image, showing that the outer layer of an innerring forms an unexplained curve. Scientists believe the rings possess aconsistent thickness of 10 meters, but these new images indicate anunexplained characteristic. With future images and research, Burnshopes to account for this fact.

"It's like looking at a sunset," he described. "The sun casts a shadow that reveals the vertical undulations of the ring."

Due to Cassini's optimal placement in orbit, the team surveyed an ambiguous structure.

However, due to the financial and technical limitations ofspace travel, astronomers rely upon optical, infrared, and radiotelescopes to identify near-Earth objects.

"Short of spaceships, telescopes are the only way to getinformation," explained Prof. Donald Campbell, radio and radarastronomy. Campbell is director of the Cornell's National Astronomy andIonosphere Center, which operates the Arecibo Observatory in PuertoRico.

"It's the world's most powerful radar," he said. "Opticaltelescopes cannot resolve these objects. It's used for radioastronomy."

The Arecibo telescope possesses a diameter of 305 meters and adepth of 51 meters, covering an area of 18 acres. Comprised of aluminumplates, the telescope sends pulses of energy in the form of radiowavelengths into space, detecting variations in spatial impact. Thesevariations allow astronomer to construct multi-dimensional models ofasteroids.

"We can measure the speed and velocity with great precision,which allows us to predict the orbit into the future," he explained."We can also make images of the object. It allows us a much greaterunderstanding of the object."

In 2007, as the National Science Foundation threatened tolimit funding to Arecibo, Campbell testified before Congress, relatingArecibo's continued importance toward identifying near-Earth objects.

"What they wanted to do was to reduce the cost, the level offunding," he explained. "Arecibo is by far the best instrument on theplanet to study near-Earth asteroids. If we lost funding it would be atremendous loss for asteroid science."

In recent years, global efforts have pushed to construct new telescopes, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

If an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, the best way toavoid a global catastrophe could be to attach a long tether with aweight at the end to deflect its orbit, a U.S. scientist has suggested.

David French, a doctoral candidate in aerospace engineering atNorth Carolina State University, said that by attaching ballast and atether to asteroids "you change the object's center of mass,effectively changing the object's orbit and allowing it to pass by theEarth, rather than impacting it."

NASA has identified over 1,000 of potentially dangerous objects nearing the Earth, and the number is growing.

"While none of these objects is currently projected to hit Earth in thenear future, slight changes in the orbits of these bodies, which couldbe caused by the gravitational pull of other objects, push from thesolar wind, or some other effect could cause an intersection," Frenchsaid.

French said that while his solution sounds far-fetched, itcompares favorably with other methods, which include painting theasteroid to change the effect sunlight has on its orbit or usingnuclear weapons.

Theodds of encountering a tsunami kicked up by an asteroid strike havejust plummeted. Best to hope, though, that you're not underneath thealmighty splash such an impact could create.

Small impactors hit us far more frequently than larger ones: a200-metre asteroid hits Earth about every 10,000 years on average,while 10-kilometre objects like the one that probably killed off thedinosaurs strike every 100 million years. Much of the worry overasteroids has centred on the more likely event of a smaller onesplashing down in the ocean and triggering a powerful tsunami.

Now simulations to be presented at an asteroid hazardconference in Granada, Spain, this month suggest that small asteroidsdo not after all pose a major tsunami threat.

Comment: Asteroids that do not strike in the ocean pose a different kind of threat.

Galen Gisler of the University of Oslo, Norway,and colleagues used software originally written to simulate the effectsof underwater nuclear explosions to hurl a virtual 200-metre asteroidinto an ocean 5 kilometres deep. The impact initially sends waveshundreds of metres high spreading from the impact site. However, thevery height of the waves makes them prone to collapse even in very deepwater: they start breaking immediately, like ordinary waves on a beach.

By the time they are 30 kilometres from the impact site, theyhave shrunk to a height of less than 60 metres. The team did notsimulate the waves' propagation much further, but extrapolating theshrinkage suggests heights of less than 10 metres by the time they havetravelled 1000 kilometres.

That might not seem very reassuring. Tsunamis with open ocean heightsof less than a metre can still be very damaging because they rise up asthey come ashore and penetrate far inland, but this is related to theirlong wavelengths and characteristic periods of 8 minutes or more.Asteroid waves would have shorter wavelengths and periods of less than2 minutes, says Gisler, and so far less penetrating power.

Steven Ward of the University of California, Santa Cruz, hasconducted his own simulations and suspects methods in Gisler'scalculations meant to smooth away errors are accidentally damping downthe waves. Ward's own results suggest much slower wave decay. Gislerresponds that his simulations are more realistic, pointing out thatprevious modelling leaves out fine-scale turbulent motion that helpsdissipate wave energy.

A strike near a populated coastline would undoubtedly causemajor damage, however. "You don't want to be close to one of thesethings," says Gisler. "Local effects will include hurricane-force windsand enormous amounts of water falling directly from the sky." Hissimulations suggest that a 200-metreasteroid would make a splash of billions of tonnes of water, whichwould descend at up to 300 metres per second within about 20 kilometresof the impact site.

Brian Toon of the Universityof Colorado in Boulder says we shouldcontinue surveying for asteroids. "We probably have quite a whilebefore we're going to get hit by a significantly sized [asteroid]," hesays. "But nevertheless one of these is going to come at us."

A cosmic visitor created a brief spectacle over the pre-dawn Wise County skies Friday.

Most likely a meteor plummeting to earth in a blaze of glory, thefireball streaked down on an easterly arc roughly above U.S. Route 58down toward what appeared to be a destination in the Tacoma area, atleast from the perspective of White Oak Road atop the Tacoma MountainRoad ridgeline, looking south.

The fiery falling object was witnessed shortly before 6:30a.m., or roughly a half-hour before sunrise. Daybreak motorists on U.S.58 would have had a nice view of an unusual event during their morningcommute, the fireball breaking apart into two pieces before flaming outin the same instant at what appeared to be just a few hundred feetabove the terrain.

The Wise County Sheriff's Dispatch Center said nocitizens reported having their breakfast rudely interrupted by asmoldering stone smashing through a ceiling or finding a car windshieldinexplicably spiderwebbed. So whatever was left of the likely meteor -tiny pieces or even tinier particles for the most part - splatteredharmlessly onto field or forest.

Dr. Lucian Undrieu, a native of Romania and a professor ofphysics at the University of Virginia's College at Wise, said a meteoris an object that disintegrates in the atmosphere, and a meteoriteactually strikes the ground. Because it flamed out, the object was mostlikely a meteor, he said.

"There are probably two (meteorites) per day all over the globe," Undrieu said.

A little-known fact is that the Earth's mass grows by an estimated 40,000 tons annually from stuff that falls from space.

Undrieu said for a meteor to have survived so close to theground, it would have been about one meter in diameter when enteringthe atmosphere, or more or less a yard thick.

Breaking into two pieces an instant before flaming out waslikely the final incineration of Friday's meteor, Undrieu said, solittle more than stardust would have sprinkled onto the ground. Also,appearing to fall over the Tacoma area would have been deceiving to theWhite Oak Road witness, he said, because the object could have been farfarther south.

Although he teaches physics, Undrieu said he occasionally teaches an introductory astronomy course at UVa-Wise.

"I take great pleasure in teaching it," he said, and expresseda hint of envy for those early birds who might have witnessed Friday'ssky spectacle of a meteoroidal kind.

Description: Standing out front of mypartners parents house admiring his mothers new car in Browns Plains,we noticed an object in the sky, which seemed very bright, a lotbrighter than the rest of the sky, it seemed to be travelling in astraight line heading north west, as it got closer it became verybright and looked like it was on fire.. we all freaked out as wethought it was a plane, maybe a huge shooting star.. Then it lookedlike a couple of pieces of it broke off which were fire looking roundobjects and stayed still in the sky burning so bright you could notmiss it. All of a sudden it started moving back in the direction itcame from and we finally lost sight of it!!

It was in sight for about five minutes or so, we do have a little footage of it on a mobile phone but not that great..

Waco - Residents from Waco to Madison County reported seeing a flamingobject streaking through the western Central Texas sky Monday morning,but there is no confirmation yet what the object may have been.

One resident reported to KBTX-TV she saw the object above the Kroger store in College Station.

Another reported seeing it while driving on Wellborn Road in College Station.

A resident also saw it in Madison County.

Robinson ISD Special Education Director Kay Carter was driving fromHouston to Waco Monday morning and was driving north on the loop justpast University in College Station when she saw the fireball.

"It came into view at the top left of my windshield comingdown at about a 45 degree angle. It was bright white with a tail behindit. It was about a fist to 1 ½ fists above the horizon and to the rightof my windshield when it flashed out very suddenly," she said in ane-mail to News 10.

"It probably lasted about a second. My first thought was ashooting star but much closer than usual. It was much larger than usualshooting stars," she said.

In February, a bright fireball and a window-rattling explosionstartled residents as a pickup-truck-size meteor plunged to Earth andshattered in a show that was visible from the West area in northernMcLennan County all the way to Austin.

OnApril 2nd, ham radio operator Stan Nelson of Roswell, New Mexico, waslistening to the radar's signals when the International Space Stationand a meteor passed through the beam in quick succession.

The slowly descending tone at the beginning of the soundtrackis the radar's doppler-shifted reflection from the ISS. It sounds likethe whistle of a train racing past a stationary bystander. Indeed, thebasic physics of the doppler shift is the same in both cases.

The rapidly descending tone near the end of the soundtrack is theradar's doppler-shifted reflection from a meteor. Because meteorstravel through space some two to ten times faster than Earth-orbitingspacecraft, their radar reflections are much more sharply dopplershifted.

A mysterious "boom" that resounded across Vancouver, Washington early Friday may have been an extraterrestrial wake-up call, theorizes a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Vancouver.

"I can't think of any other explanation, other than a fairlysubstantial gravel quarry explosion," said Jeff Wynn, researchgeophysicist with the Cascades Volcano Observatory.

Local gravel quarries reported no activity, especially at 6 a.m.

Several online readers last week offered theories about thenoise, which some reported rattling windows and spooking animals. But,in a story on Saturday, experts ruled out some of the obvious theories.It wasn't a thunderclap. It wasn't a volcanic eruption. As far asemergency managers know, nothing exploded on the ground.

Wynn said Monday he's reasonably confident that it wasa relatively large meteorite known as a bolide blowing apart in theatmosphere miles above Vancouver. He said these arrivals are surprisingly common, though normally not in such a densely populated urban area where it's experienced by so many people.

People generally reported the noise in an area of no more than about 10 miles, from west Vancouver to Hazel Dell and Orchards.

"A relatively small object could do that," Wynn said. The object wasprobably "on the order of maybe a foot when it hit the upperatmosphere. It was probably pretty close to vertical" to be heard insuch a confined area.

If it was any bigger?

"Portland wouldn't be here," he said.

Wynn personally studied the landscape impacted by aniron-nickel object that crashed down in a remote area of Saudi Arabiain 1863. It had "all the effects of a Hiroshima-scale atom bomb exceptone: no radiation," he wrote in an e-mail.

The objects enter our atmosphere at mind-bending speed - 7 to25 kilometers a second, Wynn said - which causes air to stack up infront and a vacuum behind. When the bolide breaks apart, itsnow-exponentially larger surface area creates a blindingly bright flashand a sonic boom.

Wynn recalled witnessing one by happenstance while in the midst of a fierce sandstorm on the Arabian Peninsula in 1994.

He had bundled up against the storm inside his Land Cruiser,pulled a thick sleeping bag over his head and had his eyes shut. Theflash penetrated the total darkness.

Depending on the size, composition and angle of entry, spacerocks can do worse than create a loud noise or an interesting flash.

A bolide that detonated over the Siberian Taiga on June 30,1908, leveled a forest the size of Rhode Island, Wynn said. Sixtykilometers south of the detonation point, a man in a remote tradingpost was assembling barrels with his back to the action.

"The first thing he knew, the back of his homespun wool shirtcaught on fire," Wynn said. "As he pulled the shirt off, the concussionblast hit him and knocked him end over tea kettle."

Wynn said the man's wife, spotting her husband layinghalf-naked and unconscious at the base of a tree, lugged him insidetheir cabin and nursed him back to health.

In the case of the Vancouver boom, he said, the object had tobe much smaller and composed of stony material rather than dense iron.

"If people find pieces of this thing on the ground, it will have a burned and pitted look," he said.

Wynn downplayed the chance that it was a sonic boom from anearly-morning military operation, both because a spokesman for theOregon Air National Guard discounted it and because the area affectedwas more confined than what Wynn would expect from a sonic boom from anaircraft.

"The idea that it would be a sonic boom from a militaryaircraft is pretty darn small now," he said. "It's a huge waste ofenergy, and you'd only do that if you're trying to chase someone downand shoot them."

It's clear a 170-pound black boulder doesn't belong embedded half-a-foot into a sandy loam field north of Livingston.

The puzzle is whether it fell from the sky -- a meteorite on acollision course with Earth. Or if the giant rock was abandoned 10 feetoff the road for some unknown reason, coincidentally about the sametime residents saw a fireball burning in the Central Valley sky.

The missing piece of information should be known in a few weeks, if not sooner.

Jerry McAlwee, the self-described rock hound who found the boulder witha friend, hopes it's an extraterrestrial discovery. And even if it'snot, the suspense is worth the time and effort.

"It's kind of a CSI-type thing," he said Tuesday. "If it's nota meteorite, I don't know how to explain some of the things (about therock)."

For example, magnets stick to most of its surface. Part of its crust is melted and smooth. The grass is stained around it.

McAlwee, 40, lives in Sunnyvale but helps his girlfriendmaintain five acres and a house about 100 yards from Highway 99. Alongwith a friend, Tim Mihalko, he was extending a fence on SycamoreStreet.

Surrounded by grass, Mihalko thought he'd stumbled on a treestump. As he made a closer pass with a ride-on mower, he realized itwas a rock about the size of a microwave.

He called over McAlwee, who wasn't sure what to make of it.The last time he had mowed the field was early December. The objectwasn't there. It would've mangled his mower blade.

After pondering a few theories, he wondered if it could be the remnants of the fireball seen in the night sky Dec. 27.

Several people in the state saw a tomato-green fireball flyingnorthwest through the Central Valley. It sparked interest amongmeteorite hunters. A few are said to have spent some time scouring thearea.

Meteorite researchers put the landing, if there was one,somewhere near the north Merced County line. No one has yet announcedthat they've discovered any pieces of it.

It remains to be seen whether this is from that event or some coincidence.

McAlwee sent a walnut-size sample to Eric Whichman, a San Diego resident who runs meteoritesusa.com.

Whichman said he will run preliminary tests to see if itcontains nickel and iron, two minerals found in chondrites, themost-common kind of meteorite.

He'll also look for round mineral patches called chondrules. If both those pan out, he'll ship the sample to a lab for tests.

"We're taking a wait-and-see attitude," Whichman said.

Based on the photos alone, he's skeptical that it's ameteorite. If he was forced to make an immediate judgment, he'd sayit's not a space rock.

If it turns out to be a meteorite, he said he'll visit Merced as soon as he can.

If it's not, he still wants to spend some time looking for any meteorite left by the fireball.

Regardless of how this mystery turns out, McAlwee looks at discovering the rock with a philosophical bent.

"Everyone lives between their alarm clock and their next meal,"he said. "It broadens your idea of what might be the context ofreality."

On Tuesday night a UFO was seen blazing over Salford Precinct at around10pm. Eye witness, Rachel, has described it as "a bright orange light,like a fire ball moving at a steady space. It was really weird".

It wasn't the sun by any chance? There's been similarspottings in Irlam a few nights before and all over Geater Manchesterrecently. There was even an 'encounter' in Eccles last year.

Rachel has logged the alien visitors on the UK UFOSightings website and asked for any other witnesses. If anyone else sawthe 'bright orange light' please register it at UK UFO Sightings.

Report: My children and I just pulled into our drive way as I put myhand on the door of the car to open it I saw a light greenish bluecolor and thought someone had shot off fireworks it was small at firstthen it was getting a longer and longer shape and the color waschanging to a yellow color and it was also getting wider. The tail waswhite and getting longer then the front turned white. Then it got redand really big exploded and disappered quickly.

Residents from Waco to Madison County reported seeing a flaming objectstreaking through the western Central Texas sky Monday morning, butthere is no confirmation yet what the object may have been.

One resident reported to KBTX-TV she saw the object above theKroger store in College Station. Another reported seeing it whiledriving on Wellborn Road in College Station. A resident also saw it inMadison County.

Robinson ISD Special Education Director Kay Carter was drivingfrom Houston to Waco Monday morning and was driving north on the loopjust past University in College Station when she saw the fireball.

"It came into view at the top left of my windshieldcoming down at about a 45 degree angle. It was bright white with a tailbehind it. It was about a fist to 1 ½ fists above the horizon and tothe right of my windshield when it flashed out very suddenly," she saidin an e-mail to News 10.

"It probably lasted about a second. My first thought was ashooting star but much closer than usual. It was much larger than usualshooting stars," she said.

In February, a bright fireball and a window-rattling explosionstartled residents as a pickup-truck-size meteor plunged to Earth andshattered in a show that was visible from the West area in northernMcLennan County all the way to Austin.

There have been reports of a possible meteor crashing into Earth early Sunday morning near Flagstaff.

Multiple people called police saying they saw a car size ball of flame crashing to Earth.

Jeff Hall, who works for Lowell Observatory, was at home when he lookedout his window and saw the object. "The fireball, heading northeast,was really bright, I do not know if whatever that was impacted, but itwas exceptionally bright for a meteor," Hall told KTAR.

Halls' neighbors are members of a search and rescue crew. They said a chopper crew on duty reported being "blinded" by it.

According to Hall, there may have been more than one object.

"What I saw does not seem to be the great-big huge one if in fact thatone was after midnight," Hall said. "There may well have been a couplepieces of whatever it was coming in."

Hall went on to say he doesn't believe a meteor the size of a car could even make it through the atmosphere and hit Earth.

"Most meteors, you see an ordinary sort of nice-bright shootingstar, is usually not larger than a grain of dust or a little pebble orsomething," Hall said. "Even something the size of a car is kind ofhard pressed to get all the way through the atmosphere. It depends onwhat it's made of and whether it fragments in the atmosphere or not."

There have been reports of sightings as far as the four corners area and well into New Mexico.

Despite the multiple calls, crews from Sedona to Flagstaff have yet to find anything.

Asteroidsthat might threaten Earth could pose a challenge beyond the obvious, ifnations can't get their act together and figure out a unified plan ofaction.

There are currently no known space rocks on a collision coursewith Earth, but with ample evidence for past impacts, researchers sayit's only a matter of time before one is found to be heading our way.

A swarm of political and legal issues bedevil any national or international response,whether it's responsibility for collateral damage from deflectedasteroids or the possible outcry if one country decides to unilaterallynuke the space threat.

"The word 'unorganized' is spot onhere," said Frans von der Dunk, space law expert at the University ofNebraska-Lincoln. "There is no such thing as even a platform for somelevel of coordination regarding possible responses - and, to be honest,some quarters very much would like it to remain that way."

Legal experts discussed such problems last week at a University ofNebraska-Lincoln conference titled "Near-Earth Objects: Risks,Responses and Opportunities-Legal Aspects." Their talks underscored howunderprepared the international community is to deal with policy andlegal fallout from a potential asteroid threat.

Saving Earth vs. scaring everybody

Many scientists have already brainstormed a variety of ways todeflect or destroy rogue asteroids, such as sending out spacecraft tonudge the space rock aside for a near-miss or simply blasting it apart.But some solutions may have different levels of appeal for variousnations, especially when they involve launching potential weapons intospace.

For instance, international concern surrounded a U.S. shoot-down of a failing satellitelast year, not to mention China's 2007 knockout of its own agingweather satellite with a ballistic missile. Both cases raised worriesabout the demonstration of potential missile defense systems orsatellite-killer technologies.

"The international political reactions to the U.S. shootingdown of its own satellites a year ago to prevent presumably dangerousand toxic fuel from reaching Earth only foreshadows what would happenif the U.S. would detonate nukes claiming to destroy an incomingasteroid," von der Dunk told SPACE.com.

Other scenarios could highlight the question of internationalunity. A United Nations Security Council decision on a certain asteroidresponse would likely shield participating nations against anyliabilities for collateral damage from a failed deflection orinterception attempt, if the past serves as any guide - the U.S. andother coalition nations that kicked Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991 were notheld responsible for damages to Iraq under Security Council mandate.

Depends on who'll get hit

Von der Dunk also posed the tricky question of what theinternational response would be if a smaller asteroid was headed forNorth Korea. The politically isolated nation attempted but failed toput a communications satellite into orbit in April, and would almost certainly require assistance from the U.S., Russia or China to deal with an asteroid threat.

Better international cooperation might also help in figuring out how toassess asteroid threats and release potentially scary info to thepublic.

"We have already seen scares raised by scientists ready to putout alarms out there, when either their data (fortunately quickly!)turned out to be considerably flawed, or later data allowed for a muchmore precise estimate of the risk - which turned out to be much lower,"von der Dunk said.

He pointed to the case of the Apophis asteroid,in which astronomers initially gave a one-in-37 chance of it strikingEarth in 2029, but later refined chances of collision to almost zero.

Experts at the conference agreed to keep pushing forward onlegal issues, as well as focus on general education on the asteroidthreat for policymakers. And they even discussed how private companiesmight join in the effort to monitor asteroids, potentially for thepurpose of extracting mineral wealth from space rocks.

Von der Dunk heads next to the Planetary Defense Conference inSpain April 27-30, where he will present the conference recommendationsto the International Academy of Astronautics and the European SpaceAgency.

TheRembrandt impact basin was discovered by MESSENGER during its secondflyby of Mercury in October 2008. Images show that the Rembrandt basinis remarkably well preserved.

New observations fromNASA's MESSENGER spacecraft reveal about 30 percent of the planetMercury that has never been seen up close before. A giant crater andevidence of ancient volcanoes are among the findings.

The photos show a giant impact crater that spans a length equivalent to the distance between Washington, D.C., and Boston.

MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry,and Ranging spacecraft) made its second close-approach flyby of Mercuryin October 2008, after being launched in 2004. The spacecraft is thefirst to visit the diminutive planet since the Mariner 10 spacecraft'ssojourn in the 1970s.

Until recently, scientists say the closest planet to the sunremained the least understood of the four terrestrial planets -Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. For a long time it was thought to bevery similar to Earth's moon in composition, since both worlds have asimilar gray, pockmarked appearance.

More like Mars

The new observations reveal that Mercury's crust was largely createdthrough volcanism, with past volcanoes spitting out lava that spreadand dried on the surface. In contrast, volcanism is thought to haveplayed less of a role in forming the moon's crust.

Amosaic of images collected by MESSENGER as it departed Mercury onOctober 6, 2008. The Wide Angle Camera on MESSENGER imaged the surfacethrough 11 color filters ranging in wavelength from 430 to 1020 nm.This false-color image reflects various wavelengths of light reflectingfrom the surface.

"Volcanism was a really importantprocess on Mercury, which is pretty exciting because before MESSENGER'sflybys of Mercury we were really not even sure that volcanism existedon Mercury," said Brett Denevi, a postdoctoral researcher in the Schoolof Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. Denevi islead author of a paper in the May 1 issue of the journal Science describing MESSENGER's new global map of Mercury.

In fact, Mercury's surface now appears to be more similar to that of Mars than of the moon.

The newly-discovered gigantic crater, called Rembrandt, stretches morethan 700 kilometers (430 miles) in diameter. The bowl-like indentationin Mercury's surface was likely formed about 3.9 billion years ago byan impacting space rock. It has managed to survive with parts of itsoriginal floor still intact, without being filled in by later flows ofvolcanic lava, as most craters have been.

"This is the first time we have seen terrain exposed on thefloor of an impact basin on Mercury that is preserved from when itformed," said Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and PlanetaryStudies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, lead authorof a paper describing the crater in the same issue of Science. "Terrain like this is usually completely buried by volcanic flows."

Unique crater

The crater's floor reveals important details about Mercury's history,including multiple stages of volcanic and tectonic activity thatoccurred over time.

"This is really exciting because this pattern of tectoniclandforms is unlike any we've seen in any other impact basin in thecentral solar system," Watters said.

The second MESSENGER flyby uncovered new chemicals in Mercury's tenuousatmosphere, including magnesium, which was not previously known toexist there. The discovery confirms that magnesium is an importantconstituent of Mercury's surface. Understanding the different elementspresent on Mercury helps scientists reconstruct the planet's historyand its formation.

During the spacecraft's second close approach to Mercury, it alsomeasured a much more dynamic magnetic field around the planet than wasseen during the first flyby. These changes in magnetic field are tiedto the powerful radiation streaming off the nearby sun, and drivevariability in Mercury's atmosphere.

Researchers hope that even more secrets of Mercury will be revealedthis fall, when MESSENGER makes its third and final flyby of the planetbefore setting into orbit around it.

1 comment:

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL THAT LIVE BY THE SEA OR OCEAN SHORE AT 1 FOOT TO 50 FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL. Or with in ten miles of the coast. World Wide.

This will be a very close call i pray it is only that. Discovered on December 28, 2005 by Robert McMillan of the Spacewatch Program A potentially hazardous Asteroid known as 2005 YU55.

This Asteroid some what Large 400 meter-sized type – C, will pass by the Earth right between our moon and Earth. On November 8, 2011.

The people on Earth have not seen a Asteroid of this size in advance. One this big Has not impacted Earth in over at least 4 thousand years.

Most Objects that have a diameters over 45 meters or 147.637 ft strike the Earth approximately once every thousand years or so. Lying flat everything for hundreds of miles.

Like the TUNGUSKA 1908 SIBERIA, RUSSIA CRASH OR Tunguska Explosion. This one did not even hit the Earth with its full Impact, it burst high in the air above the ground plowing it apart into many smaller parts. Making thousands of very deep holes in the Russian forests. Many of them in dense forest far from any roads or towns.

One 400 Meters 1,312.3 ft in diameter like this one YU55 weighing millions of tons would if impacted Earth on land would darken all of the Earth not for just days but much longer.

It would change the weather not seen on Earth in over thousands of years a massive climate change to say the least.

Asteroids in our Asteroid Belt that is between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars do have collisions and some do turn into meteoroids many in the past thousands of years have come into the Earth's Atmosphere. Many of thousands of them make it into Meteorites the signs are all over the Earth, craters of all sizes.

The World and NASA will watch this one very closely.Most likely more Earthquakes and the Oceans Tide will be strongly affected just from a near miss.